018

The stained-glass windows in Frank’s chambers caught the moonlight in hues of drowning blue as he sat sharpening his saber. Shadows flickered in the darkened corners of the room like ghosts beneath black waves, and something chittered in the walls, insects maybe, the sound waxing and waning like the tide itself.

“How dost thou feel?” Thune said, staring down from his silk pillow.

“Like hammered shit.” Frank didn’t bother looking up from his blade. His back and ribs still ached, but the mysterious cracking noise that came with every movement had finally stopped. The medicine Virelios had given him dulled his pain, which helped, but he also seemed to be healing faster than normal.

Was there no end to the wonders of this body?

“I presume that vulgarity was an assessment of thy physical state. But I was inquiring about thy mental faculties, as well.”

“Everything is fine there.”

“I sense a weakening in thee.”

Psionic Reserve: 80/100

“I didn’t realize that was a thing you could sense."

“Thou hast used thy powers again.”

Frank set down his blade and raised his arms like a bodybuilder before a panel of judges, inviting appraisal. But it wasn’t his physique he was showing off, it was his damage. The bruised face, the sutured laceration along his side, the accumulation of cuts and scrapes and swelling.

“I was in a street fight today,” he said. “Six guys beat me half-to-death with clubs. And the only reason it was half-to-death and not full-to-death was because I used my powers to save myself. You going to scold me for that?”

“I do not wish to scold thee, Frank Farrell. I wish to warn thee.”

“I got the message, loud and clear. I know what’s waiting for me when the well runs dry. Hell, it’s the reason I haven’t gotten a minute of sleep since our meditation session. I see that black ocean every time I close my eyes, hear those crashing waves. But if I’m being honest, Thune, it feels like I’ve got a lot left to give before it all goes to shit.”

“That may be true. But it is better to preserve thy strength.”

“If it’s a choice between life and death, that’s not much of a choice at all.”

“As I have said in the past, there are fates worse than death. Look no further than my own cursed visage. Argos is a dangerous place.”

It was a point well made. But if Frank was being honest, he liked the danger.

He wouldn’t admit that to Thune, of course. Hell, he could barely admit it to himself. But if half the thrill of this place was its strange spectacle and weird wonder, the other half was its risk.

He liked the way it kept him on edge, sharp and focused and ready. He had never felt more alive than he had here, a place where fighting for his life was a daily activity.

He even liked the fighting itself. He’d never been a tough guy in real life, only on the screen. He probably hadn’t thrown a punch in anger since high school. Violence just wasn’t his thing. Sure, he liked action movies, and he could enjoy a good MMA fight now and then, but he’d never had a desire to participate.

Not until he became Skulltaker.

Something about wearing this body had changed his relationship to violence. The threat of it no longer filled him with dread. It felt natural, even inevitable. A physical challenge had to be met directly; to do otherwise was to invite pain and suffering. That was the unspoken rule of this world and maybe every world, he’d begun to think.

He didn’t have to like it, but he did have to live by it … or die by it. The choice was his.

And the way this body performed, he'd choose violence every time. It was a deeply satisfying experience. He loved the practiced coordination in every punch, the way he moved with devastating agility and strength, the way he swelled when raw power coursed through his veins.

Even the horrific parts, the gushing blood and split skulls and broken limbs, held no revulsion for him, no guilt. He’d killed six men today and yet their deaths never troubled him. And why should they? He wouldn’t fault a tiger for killing, it was in their nature.

And as Argos kept reminding him, time and time again, he was the tiger now.

A knock sounded on the door, three quick raps, soft but urgent.

Thune closed his eye, feigning death, as Frank reached for the door. He opened it to find a slave girl with eyes like burnished brass.

She was dressed in the sea-green wrap of a household servant, but moved with the poise of a trained courtesan. Her beauty was visceral, almost an assault, her full lips painted with crushed berries, and her wide amber eyes offset with a flick of kohl. She had a dusting of freckles across her pale cheeks and her hair was shaved but for a black braid that curled down her spine like a wick.

“The physician, master Virelios, heard you are feeling poorly, honored guest.” She crossed her arms over her chest and bowed deeply. “May I be of assistance?”

“Please,” Frank muttered, his voice suddenly caught in his throat.

“I would take you to master Virelios at your earliest convenience.” Her words suggested a familiarity with servitude, and her movements were the careful movements of a slave. But she carried herself like something more. There was a little too much steel in her spine, too much fire in her voice. She seemed to be watching closely, always listening, not the least bit afraid.

“What’s your name?”

“Kyra.”

“Right, Kyra,” Frank said. “Just a minute.”

He gathered the roughspun sack from off the bed, opened it and then reached for Thune on his silk pillow.

The girl made a soft, unconscious noise, little more than the sound of her lips parting, but the tension of the moment seemed to magnify it.

“A friend,” Frank said.

The girl met his eyes but didn’t answer.

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t talk much.”

***

They moved through the halls of the manor at a purposeful pace, neither rushing nor dawdling. Kyra carried no torch or candle, and the only light at that hour was moonlight through stained windows. Despite the dark, she had no trouble navigating, sometimes even doubling back or crossing and uncrossing a hall as though she feared being followed, although Frank didn’t notice anyone nearby.

They made their way through a deep cellar and then into a subbasement and then past a false wall leading to an underground tunnel. When they climbed back up to street level, they were in a narrow alleyway on the far side of the manor walls, their exit hole disguised as a sewer grate.

It was barely big enough for Frank to fit through. He'd had to remove his saber and the shield strapped to his back and even Thune, handing each up to Kyra, before attempting to squeeze through himself.

The slave girl led him through the noble quarters of Uqmai, keeping just a half step ahead of him and close at his side so that, at a glance, it would look like she was following him, as was appropriate for her station. It was a subtle gesture but one that hinted at her cunning and awareness.

“How long have you served Virelios?” he asked.

“That is a question for my master.”

“I didn’t mean to pry. Just trying to make small talk.”

“Forgive my directness,” she said, never slowing her pace. In the moonlight, her body looked like something carved for a temple, all soft curves and firm skin. She move with the smoothness of poured oil. “But this is not the time or place for small talk. Uqmai is the city of ten thousand ears. Often silence is best.”

They passed through a tunnel formed from the ribcage of a fallen leviathan, the bones long since petrified and hollowed into a thoroughfare. Wind instruments hung from the ribs, made of chitin and shark skin, each piping soft, discordant music as the night air moved through them.

In the Plaza of Broken Faces, a hundred shattered statues from faraway lands stood arranged like chess pieces from an overturned board, kings and queens, saints and monsters, all defaced or melted into new forms by time and weather. A street preacher with green-tinted skin and glassy eyes cried about the coming flood, flanked by raggedy bodyguards with knives made of obsidian.

When they reached the Moonlight Bazaar, the slave girl stopped beside a shop that had been swallowed by creeping moss. It had no sign. Just an arch of stained basalt, carved with waveforms and curling, crab-like script. A human skull sat perched above the door, its eye sockets set with tarnished coins of indeterminate metal.

Kyra glanced up and down the street, knocked once and then entered. The air was cooler inside than out, and heavy with fragrance, a strange blend of myrrh and wet rope. Tall amphorae lined the floor and smaller bottles covered every surface, jammed into shelves and arranged in tall cases that leaned drunkenly.

And there, behind the bar of driftwood and whale rib, stood Tullo.

It was clear at first sight he wasn’t a Brass Man. He was tall, just a few inches shorter than Frank, and powerfully built, where the Brass Men tended to be shorter and leaner. His skin was a ruddy bronze, as if carved from aged cedar. He had thick brown hair, with blond highlights, that he wore tied back in a sailor’s tail. One of his eyes was missing, replaced by a spiraling tattoo that coiled outward like a whirlpool, disappearing under his jaw and into his hairline.

“Nice to see you, Kyra,” he said with a nod.

The girl crossed her arms and bowed low.

“And you must be the trouble Virelios warned me about.”

“That’s me,” Frank said.

“Where are you from?”

“I’m an outlander.”

“I knew that the moment you stepped foot in my door. I’m asking where you come from exactly. Cause I’ve sailed to all the great kingdoms in the shattered seas, and I’ve never seen a man like you.”

“And you never will again.”

Tullo fixed Frank with a cold stare. “You know there’s a bounty on your head?”

“From who?”

“The city guard themselves. Ten gold pieces. What do you say, Kyra? Should we turn him in, collect the reward and run away together?”

The slave girl smiled, despite herself, and Tullo laughed.

“Come. We’ll talk in the cellar. I’ve uncorked something special.”

They stepped into a backroom and then descended a ladder into a low, torch-lit vault beneath the shop. The torches seemed almost painfully bright, burning with white hot flame. Frank could only guess at what was fueling them.

The walls were carved stone covered in soot, and set with yet more shelves that bowed under the weight of ancient wines, some in amphorae, others sealed in the bladders of extinct beasts. A low, round table waited in the center of the room, with three cups already set.

“Expecting company at this time of night?” Frank said.

“Maybe not expecting it,” Tullo said. “But always prepared for it.”

They sat. Tullo gestured for Kyra to join them, but she declined, moving instead to stand by the foot of the ladder. Staring straight ahead, she clasped her hands behind her back, and then her eyes rolled up into her head.

“She’ll keep out anyone too nosy for their own good.”

“She’s a mentalist?” Frank said.

“Is she a mentalist?” Tullo snorted. “Does your grandmother piss sitting down? Of course she’s a mentalist. Gotta be second rank by now.”

“Virelios didn’t tell me that.”

“Sounds like Virelios.”

Tullo poured a plum-colored wine that fizzed faintly when it touched the air. He sipped, then leaned back with a satisfied sigh. He reached into a sea-chest behind him and retrieved a thick sheaf of scrolls, bound together with twine. Its first page was marked with the sigil of House Saar’Jin, a coral crown resting atop a merchant’s balance.

“What’s this?” Frank said.

“This is what you’ve come for.” Tullo undid the twine and started to separate the papers. Some of the pages were made of parchment and some of vellum. Others were written on sailcloth or even stranger materials. “A compendium of records of House Saar’Jin. Ship manifests, caravan logs, private ledgers, trade reports. Some of this stuff goes back three hundred years.”

“What are you doing with it?”

“Same thing everyone in Uqmai is doing. Trying to earn a coin. I started collecting this for a different client, a man with no name who paid in emeralds and asked no questions. He disappeared six months ago.”

“And you kept it all?”

“I’m a hoarder,” Tullo said, not without pride. “You live in Uqmai long enough, you learn that anything can be valuable. In the right place. At the right time.” He unrolled a chart. “Now this is where House Saar’Jin was born. The Gulf of Quor. They started off as simple sea traders, built themselves into merchant lords. They had a thousand ships at their height. Twenty vassal houses. Their own standing army.”

Frank studied the map. “What happened?”

“Some will say they just lost their touch. Strong kings make weak princes. Bit by bit, coin by coin, route by route, the empire gets whittled away until the only thing that’s left is faded banners and old glories. Happens all the time.”

“But that’s not what you think happened.”

Tullo held up a rough pen and ink sketch on a scrap of parchment. It was a twisted circle of black bone, like a burned vertebra, wrapped by an eel.

“I trust you know what this is?”

“A ring,” Frank said, and looking at the drawing, he could almost convince himself that was true.

“The legendary Ring of Eventide. The most prized possession of House Saar’Jin. There are three stories about where it came from. One claims it was fished from the guts of a god-beast beached on the Sapphire Coast. Another says it was … retrieved … from the body of Lord Selkath’s first heir, a stillborn son. The last, and the one I believe, says it was given to them by the Black Spire itself, in return for a promise.”

“What kind of promise?”

“That I can’t say. But what I do know is it allowed them access to a certain island. No name. Not on any charts. From what I gather, it only appeared on a specific night of the year, during a specific tide. And on that night, the lord of house Saar'Jin met to make exchanges.”

“With who?”

Tullo’s eyes darkened. “Not with who. With what.”

Frank waited.

“The records are vague. But they speak of gifts offered and gifts returned. Power, luck, unnatural windfalls. I can show you a hundred trade logs with accounts that don’t make sense. A ship leaves port with a hold full of honey. By the time it docks, the crew is dead, the captain has gouged out his own eyes, and the barrels are filled with gold. Trade routes buried by the sea for hundreds of years suddenly reopen, but only for caravans bearing Saar’Jin’s sigils. All others that try to pass get destroyed by storms, swallowed up by quicksand. On and on like this for ages.”

“But there was a catch.”

“Always.” Tullo sipped. “One year, the offerings were rejected. I can’t find a reason why. Just hints. A price too high to pay. The account of a child who claimed to be rescued from an underwater temple. A demon hunter from the church of Meryth become involved. And then the deaths began.”

Frank leaned in.

“The bearers of the ring, always the high lord of the house, began to die, one by one. Not by sword. By accident. Or madness. One drowned in his bath. Another was found frozen stiff in bed on a summer morning. Another choked to death on a fishbone said to be strong enough to shatter bronze. A priest who attended one lord struck by a strange pox wrote the family was ‘picking the wrong pockets in the court of an unkowable god.’”

Frank’s skin crawled.

“So they stopped wearing it. Hid it. Eventually tried to destroy it. They hired a sorcerer from the Rotlands, a real twisted bastard who walked about on cloven hooves. The kind of guy who can unbind a man’s name from his soul.”

“Did it work?”

“No. The ritual backfired. The sorcerer and six witnesses died screaming. That is to say, they died while screaming, and then continued screaming for a month more. The house matron went mad, tried to eat her own children.”

“But the ring survived.”

“And vanished. Taken, it’s believed, by the Black Spire. Reclaimed, like a debt unpaid.”

“And now Sazhra wants it back.”

Tullo nodded. “But why? That’s the question. Does she want to destroy it for good, end the legacy? Or does she want to restore the pact? Try to rebuild what was lost?”

Frank stared into his wine, watching it swirl like a storm. “Either way she’s playing with fire.”

“In Uqmai,” Tullo said, “that’s how you stay warm.”